90 | Mass Media and Historical Change
party base whose very formation as such was often the result of reading the
same papers. In France especially, the newspapers thus became a kind of party
substitute, but in Germany, too, they served to unite like-minded people in
various regions of the country (Requate 1995: 394). Because the political ori-
entation of the newspapers displayed in coffee houses and pubs determined
the clientele, they indirectly had the effect of creating gathering places for
those of similar worldviews. The newspapers on display in these locales often
triggered political debates (Bösch 2004).
This booming Central European party press was neither an anachronism
nor a new form of journalistic dependence. On the contrary, parties were
modern democratic organisations, and for journalists, party affiliation often
meant independence from the government. Thanks to the party press, several
competing organs could coexist even where supernumerary newspapers were
not profitable. This ushered in a change in the political power balance of the
media market. Thus the Liberal press was dominant in Great Britain during
the Liberal governments of the 1860s to 1880s, and later the Conservatives
dominated the media and voting market (Lee 1976: 158, 179). In a similar
way the Social Democratic press in Germany expanded rapidly after 1890 with
a concurrent increase of the votes of their party, SPD. Studies in Norway also
show that during the late nineteenth century both the Liberal and Conserva-
tive press held sway in their respective voter strongholds (Høyer, in Høyer and
Pöttker 2005: 77). Nevertheless, one should not unthinkingly equate voters
with newspaper readers. In actual fact, the circulation of the SPD press before
the First World War was less than the number of SPD voters; among the
Liberals, this situation was reversed (circulation data according to R. Stöber
2000: 213 and 222). Consequently it is reasonable to infer that many Social
Democrats read Liberal newspapers, especially during the 1890s.
The media thus had a twofold effect on social and political milieus. Such
milieus developed in many Central European countries at the end of the nine-
teenth century in the wake of culture struggles and the persecution of Social-
ists. On the one hand the party press promoted a fragmentation in separate
social environments: Social Democrats, Catholics, Liberals and Conservatives
not only tended to move within their own organisations, pubs and politi-
cal parties, but the fact that they got their information from disparate media
sources magnified the differences in their worldviews. Events occurring in
other social spheres were often ignored or derided. On the other hand the
news organs, particularly the Liberal ones, built bridges to other spheres. Even
in the Conservative Kreuz-Zeitung one could sometimes read the text of SPD
Reichstag speeches, albeit in condensed form and garnished with negative
commentary.
There is still a great need for research, especially in Germany. In con-
trast to England and the United States, practically no reliable, substantiated,